Whatever is holding us back from fully achieving all our objectives, just having a better tool is seldom enough. Dojo4Life crowdcoaching enables you remove the friction holding you back. Adds the fuel you need to use the tools you already have to your maximum.

If it’s urgent take our one-on-one programmes with one of our experienced coaches. Or sign up to join our next topical group with after the same thing. You can also join any of our regular dojo practice sessions and work with your sparring partner on your specific topic.

Here’s a bit more on two of the common themes. Time management, and dealing with more complexity or ambiguity after a promotion.

Time management.

A lot of ambitious people find that their time is running away from them. They find that all of the things that need to be done, somehow don’t quite get done. If, like me, you’ve tried a lot of different time management techniques and still find that your time is running away from you then Dojo4Life crowdcoaching will help you. Very often what is keeping you from applying from executing the excellent time management tool that you’ve adopted, are things that have little to do with managing time. Instead, blocking behaviours get in your way. Such as sitting down to start that report. But first I need to check Facebook. Or whatever it is that you do. Until you have uncovered what drives those blocking behaviours, the best time management app is of little use to you.

Promotion, Ambiguity and Complexity: I’ve just been promoted, and my world has changed.

Promotions usually lead to a very stressful time for somewhere between six months and two years. All of a sudden, the things that you were doing extremely well and that led to your promotion are no longer enough. No matter how well you do them, no matter how much of them you do. In fact, continuing to do those things well may even block you from doing your new role well. Regardless of what you been promoted to, regardless of whether it is a promotion to the next level in the same discipline, or a sideways promotion into a completely new discipline to broaden you, lots changes. Regardless of what else is changed what’s always present is more complexity. However, very seldom are people given programmes to develop their ability to work with more complexity.

Training is usually what you’re told to do, but it’s seldom helpful. Usually you need developmental coaching suitable for adaptive challenges. i.e., those where you need to change yourself and become the next “version” of you. This means developing two critical capabilities complex:

Grow your mental capacity to work with everything in the big picture. Especially ambiguity and paradox.

Grow your emotional capacity to interpret what it all means for you.

1) Grow your mental capacity to work with everything in the big picture. Especially ambiguity and paradox.

If you cannot grasp everything that is really happening in your new role, you are unlikely to achieve your ambitions. If your job is bigger than it was last year, maybe things are just more complex, but usually there is ambiguity, paradox and contradiction. Usually things are changing fast, where previously you could safely assume that they did not change. You need to take into account how things are interrelated, where previously you did not. You need to think about how the different elements of a much bigger picture fit together. And how by fitting together like that they keep the whole business is stable and working. In Dojo4Life you learn powerful thought patterns to master complexity, ambiguity and rapid change. In short, you learn how to make sense of the larger context of your new job.

2) Grow your emotional capacity to interpret what it all means for you.

Every time I have been promoted or changed my career I have needed to change something about who I am in order to succeed. One typical example, is having been the expert in doing R&D and getting promoted into a role of managing the other experts in that area. Maybe this is you; clearly, you’ve been promoted because perhaps you are the most expert in that area. You probably can do everything better than everybody else. And yet if you continue to do everything better than everybody else, and so doing everybody else’s work for them, your organisation will under perform. When promoted into a management role it’s time to do stop doing many of the things that made you successful before promotion. But that is really hard, because of the part of you that says “if you stop doing that, you will … “ (insert whatever negative words come to mind.)

The reason why people often fail after being promoted to a role that is more complex in its demands on them, is that the new role does not just demand mastering more complex content, with fast changes and more interrelatedness, it also demands that you become somebody new. That you use more effective ways of deciding what something means for you, your work, and your colleagues.

Core to doing that is self-mastery. Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. Both why do you do the things that are helpful to you in your new role, so that you can do even more of those even better. But also, finding out why you do some things that block you from success and achievement in your new role. So that you can do fewer of those. Most of the things that we do that block us from achieving what we are committed to achieve lie in an often even stronger commitment to protect something. All of us have vulnerabilities, areas where we fear being blamed or feeling shame. Each of us has a wide range of things that we find trigger our defence mechanisms.

The biggest mistake that you can try to make is to bluntly force yourself to do something that your defences have declared is threatening and dangerous to you. If you commit such an act of blind brutality on yourself, you’re only going to hurt yourself and make things worse in the long term. But, many of the things that we defend ourselves against today, don’t warrant such a strong defence. Quite often, we find that we are protecting vulnerabilities that emerged when we were children, that were absolutely necessary to protect against as children, but now, as adults don’t need to be protected against. Dojo4Life enables you grow beyond who you were, grow beyond your current defence triggers.